


To Live Life in Monotone

by J (j_writes)



Category: The Avengers (2012), West Wing
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-19
Updated: 2012-05-19
Packaged: 2017-11-05 16:00:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/408321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_writes/pseuds/J
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're not going to die today, soldier," Fury informed him.  "There's about to be a vacancy in my team."</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Live Life in Monotone

**Author's Note:**

> self-indulgent headcanon in which Casper is who Coulson was between the Rangers and SHIELD. (headcanon that, incidentally, turns out to be shared by [Clark Gregg](https://twitter.com/clarkgregg/status/205790235668385793). \o/)
> 
> [post-movie, contains spoilers]

Three years to the day after being benched for medical reasons, Special Agent Mike Casper ripped out his earpiece and entered a hostage situation, saving the lives of four other agents and losing his own in the process.

He remembered it less as the day he died, and more as the day he stopped believing in heroes.  
______________

Mike started collecting Captain America memorabilia more because he was a completionist than for any other reason. He inherited a stack of comics from his neighbor – who insisted he'd outgrown them – and started filling in the gaps between them mostly just because he couldn't stand having blank spaces in his understanding of the continuity.

It was his neighbor who made him a fan, too, inadvertently and much later, coming across him on the steps with a comic across his knees and pausing just long enough to say, "Captain America wasn't a hero, you know. He was just a guy."

He'd never considered doing any actual research on the character, but once he started, he couldn't stop, checking every book out of the library that he could find with any reference to Steve Rogers or James Barnes, throwing himself into historical study with a level of enthusiasm that even he hadn't thought himself capable of. 

Captain America, it turned out, was more of a caricature than a hero. Steve Rogers, on the other hand, was everything that Mike Casper knew he could never be.  
______________

He was fourteen when Reagan was shot. It was a Monday, and he faked sick the next day to sit in front of the news coverage on TV, skipping channels to watch the same few seconds of footage over and over.

"I'll never understand anyone," his mother said, standing in the doorway and shaking her head, "who would voluntarily take a job where you'd be expected to jump in front of a bullet."

"No," he agreed absently, "me neither," but he meant exactly the opposite.  
______________

The Army was a good fit for him in ways he expected it would be, and it was a challenge in ways he hadn't thought to consider. He did well – solid, dependable, with a strategic mind and an ability to appear utterly generic when necessary – and when Sgt. Fury came to his unit looking for men to poach for a special task force, Mike was called in front of him.

"Casper," he said, reading the name off the file, then looked up at him. "You make a fine soldier."

"Thank you, sir."

"It wasn't meant to be a compliment."

"Yes, sir."

He was dismissed without another word.

Two years later, he led a mission that ended up intersecting with one of Fury's, and it was his men who got Fury's out alive, by virtue of him pretending he'd never heard a bad call that Fury's second in command made. He received a significant injury in the process, and was bleeding in the extraction chopper when Fury found him.

"Casper," he greeted, looming over the stretcher. 

"Sir," he replied, barely managing to lift his hand to salute. "There's only a twenty percent chance you'll need to worry about the court martial." He nodded down to the wound in his side. "Less if you stall the flight."

"You're not going to die today, soldier," Fury informed him. "There's about to be a vacancy in my team."

His reassignment papers came while he was still in the hospital, along with his promotion.  
______________

"FBI," Fury said mildly. He looked Mike over, starting to smile. "I can see it. You'll make a good suit."

"I'd thank you," Mike replied, "but I know better than to think you mean that as a compliment." He reached across the table for Fury's beer and took a long sip of it. "If this ever becomes anything bigger than a solo gig, though – "

"You'll be the first to know," Fury assured him. 

Mike took that for the brush-off it was, and he signaled the waitress for another round of drinks.  
______________

"You owe me fifty," he said to Fury's voicemail, hung up, and went to take a shower.

"Motherfucker," was the reply when he returned, and he grinned at his reflection in the mirror as he toweled himself off. "I _know_ you didn't find Cap, so I'm not even gonna _ask_ how you ended up in the Oval Office."

The next morning, Mike woke to find an envelope stuffed under his door, a crisp $50 bill inside.  
______________

Three days before he died, he found a post-it note on his desk with the simple words _it's gotten bigger_ written on it in a familiar scrawl.

"Sounds great, Nick," he said into the phone, "but I think you're going to have to kill me first."

"It's already been arranged," Fury told him, and the line went dead.

He received a file the night before the mission, and he read over it with a sinking feeling in his chest. "Not like this," he said when Fury answered the phone. "I don't need to tell you that we don't take curtain calls, Nick. This was supposed to be small, under the radar."

"You come to my agency," Fury said with a severity that Mike hadn't heard from him in years, "you play on my terms. If I say you're going to die a hero, Casper, you're going to die a motherfucking hero." He hung up before Mike could answer, and Mike sat there trying to think of who he should be calling on his last night on earth.

He couldn't come up with any names, so he spent it reading the literature Fury had provided him on SHIELD instead.  
______________

They ended up in a hotel room after the op, passing a bottle of scotch between them, watching the coverage of the day's events on the news. It wasn't until the White House briefing room showed up that he reached over Fury for the remote and clicked the TV off with unnecessary finality, too late to avoid the unsteadiness in CJ Cregg's voice as she began speaking. The silence that followed was uncomfortable and deafening until Fury broke it.

"What did I tell you, Mike? You're a goddamn hero."

"Phil," he corrected absently. "And I'm not sure what happened out there today, Nick, but I do know that it had nothing to do with heroics."

"It did," Fury told him, "they just weren't yours. Think of it as backpay on the credit you've never taken for anything, and you'll never get again."

He passed the bottle back, and Phil took another drink.  
______________

He wore two sets of dog tags under his suit, and the only one to ever notice was Romanoff. "These are supposed to identify you," she said severely in the middle of a mission, tugging on the chain with one hand while the other pressed a bandage to his chest.

"They do," he told her simply, and she raised her eyebrows. 

"Then who's Michael Casper?"

"A dead man."

She nodded, and let it be.  
______________

"You owe me fifty," Fury said, leaning against Phil's doorframe.

Phil glanced up, blinking at him from behind his glasses. "I beat you to it," he reminded him. "That means the bet's off the table."

"No," Fury said. "You beat me to the Oval Office. This is regarding the other bet."

Phil set his coffee mug down so hard it shattered.  
______________

Six years and three months after joining SHIELD, Agent Phil Coulson faced down a self-proclaimed god with an experimental weapon in a desperate attempt to save the lives of untold agency personnel, and lost his own in the process.

This time, the death was less feigned than it was simply temporary. He watched the news coverage from his hospital room, saw Iron Man fighting alongside Captain America, Thor scooping Barton up and depositing him on a rooftop, the Hulk bashing in the skulls of invading aliens while Romanoff took them down from their own transports. He watched a team form in front of his eyes, and when his phone rang he couldn't find an objection to make as he heard Fury's voice telling him, "This is all you, Coulson."

In time, given some distance, he came to remember it less as the day he died, and more as the day he started believing in heroes again.


End file.
